Big Brother Awards – call for nominations (urgent!)

As members of the EDRi, we received the following letter at ISOC-Bulgaria, and I think it is important to see and read it, and if you know candidates, please, nominate them!

From Simon Davies:
My apologies for the urgency of this request, but I should this is something that might interest EDRi members.

Many of you will know about the Big Brother Awards, which Privacy International established in 1998 to identify the worst privacy offenders in the UK. The awards now take place as an annual event in more than 15 countries. See http://www.bigbrotherawards.org/

We’ve decided, at extremely short notice, to hold a BBA during the Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference in Montreal on May 2nd. We’ve also decided to make this the first ever global award ceremony. This means we will target governments, multinationals and global projects, rather than focusing on privacy invasion at the national level.

We’re now seeking nominations for these awards, and wondered whether EDRi members might have some ideas of names to put forward. The award categories are as follows:

– Worst Public Official. This award will be given to a public servant or
politician (operating on the global stage) who has done the most to destroy
privacy.

– Most heinous Government. This award goes to a national government that
has demonstrated extraordinary disregard for privacy rights. The UK and US
are currently the lead contenders.

– Most appalling project or technology. This one will go to a project or
application that has global reach.

– Most Invasive global Company.

– Lifetime Menace. This is the big one. Here we are looking for the
all-time baddy. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a big player, such as a
government. Could be something unexpected.

So, if you have any nominations for the awards we would be very grateful if you could please email them to me at s.g.davies@lse.ac.uk preferably before 18.00 hours on Thursday 19th April (this coming Thursday).

Note from Veni: We have Bulgarian edition of these “awards”. Check the website (has both Bulgarian, and English versions).